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RAFAEL SA ́NCHEZ

Which does not mean, contrary to what some local commentators think, that the
overall significance of the recent Venezuelan events comes down to the notion of a deficit
of politics that can simply be remedied by injecting more of the same into the activities
and programs of the opposition. Without clarifying how, in the present circumstances,
doing so would be possible, these analysts draw from the opposition’s defeat in the refer-
endum the lesson that more politics is needed if in the future this sector is to have a
fighting chance against Cha ́vez. In other words, according to them, any opposition come-
back is contingent upon the ability of this sector to shake off its dependency upon the
media and to get on with the reconstitution of the political parties and other representa-
tive instances that have been washed out by the catastrophic socio-political upheavals of
recent years. While there is some truth in this—certainly, the opposition will somehow
have to improve upon that (political) score if it wishes to leave its mark on the future
course of local events—the question still remains as to how doing so would be possible
in Venezuela today. That is, how, beyond wishful thinking, would it be possible effectively
to reconstitute political instances that the drift of events has perhaps rendered hopelessly
ineffectual?
With this, I arrive at my second point concerning what has transpired in Venezuela
since the referendum, one that is considerably more disturbing than just saying that poli-
tics was lacking so as to better pave the way for the return of the (theologico-)political. It
is, after all, not politics but its retreat—that is, the retreat of the theologico-political—that,
in such events, is ultimately at stake. While the excess of the regime’s politics, if that is
what it was, bought it some time, allowing it momentarily to prevail over its politically
deficient opponents, abundant signs suggest how fragile such an outcome really is, how
much, in other words, the present configuration of forces is an equilibrium that is highly
volatile, largely because, no matter how numerically overbearing it may be,^61 the victory
of the regime in the referendum has not stopped the hemorrhage of politico-theological
substance with which, after a relatively brief honeymoon in the beginning, it has cease-
lessly been afflicted.
The distinction Louis Marin makes between ‘‘force’’ and ‘‘power’’ may be useful here.
If, for Marin, ‘‘force’’ results in the struggle to the death among contending parties right
now, ‘‘power’’ is the ability of some signs to hold such force in reserve, thereby introduc-
ing a necessary delay, which somewhat defuses the devastations of the present.^62 While at
present the Cha ́vez regime enjoys considerable amounts of ‘‘force,’’ as measured by its
success in the polls or its ability to control virtually all of the nation’s main economic and
political institutions over and against the will and desires of its opponents, the same
cannot be said of its capacity to accumulate ‘‘power.’’ Bedeviled by a rosary of calamitous
ills that instantly reverberate in the media,^63 from rampant corruption to faltering govern-
ment-sponsored programs for the poor, a failing oil industry, and proliferating conflicts
among its rank and file, the regime seems constitutionally unable to capitalize on its
successes so as enduringly to totalize the social and political field in reference to some

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